Towards a global participatory platform: Democratising open data, complexity science and collective intelligence

The FuturICT project seeks to use the power of big data, analytic models grounded in complexity science, and the collective intelligence they yield for societal benefit. Accordingly, this paper argues that these new tools should not remain the preserve of restricted government, scientific or corporate élites, but be opened up for societal engagement and critique. To democratise such assets as a public good, requires a sustainable ecosystem enabling different kinds of stakeholder in society, including but not limited to, citizens and advocacy groups, school and university students, policy analysts, scientists, software developers, journalists and politicians. Our working name for envisioning a sociotechnical infrastructure capable of engaging such a wide constituency is the Global Participatory Platform (GPP). We consider what it means to develop a GPP at the different levels of data, models and deliberation, motivating a framework for different stakeholders to find their ecological niches at different levels within the system, serving the functions of (i) sensing the environment in order to pool data, (ii) mining the resulting data for patterns in order to model the past/present/future, and (iii) sharing and contesting possible interpretations of what those models might mean, and in a policy context, possible decisions. A research objective is also to apply the concepts and tools of complexity science and social science to the project's own work. We therefore conceive the global participatory platform as a resilient, epistemic ecosystem, whose design will make it capable of self-organization and adaptation to a dynamic environment, and whose structure and contributions are themselves networks of stakeholders, challenges, issues, ideas and arguments whose structure and dynamics can be modelled and analysed. Graphical abstrac

BUILDING BRIDGES FOR INNOVATION IN AGEING : SYNERGIES BETWEEN ACTION GROUPS OF THE EIP ON AHA

The Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) proposed six Action Groups. After almost three years of activity, many achievements have been obtained through commitments or collaborative work of the Action Groups. However, they have often worked in silos and, consequently, synergies between Action Groups have been proposed to strengthen the triple win of the EIP on AHA. The paper presents the methodology and current status of the Task Force on EIP on AHA synergies. Synergies are in line with the Action Groups' new Renovated Action Plan (2016-2018) to ensure that their future objectives are coherent and fully connected. The outcomes and impact of synergies are using the Monitoring and Assessment Framework for the EIP on AHA (MAFEIP). Eight proposals for synergies have been approved by the Task Force: Five cross-cutting synergies which can be used for all current and future synergies as they consider overarching domains (appropriate polypharmacy, citizen empowerment, teaching and coaching on AHA, deployment of synergies to EU regions, Responsible Research and Innovation), and three cross-cutting synergies focussing on current Action Group activities (falls, frailty, integrated care and chronic respiratory diseases).Peer reviewe

ARIA 2016: Care pathways implementing emerging technologies for predictive medicine in rhinitis and asthma across the life cycle

The Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative commenced during a World Health Organization workshop in 1999. The initial goals were (1) to propose a new allergic rhinitis classification, (2) to promote the concept of multi-morbidity in asthma a

ARIA 2016:Care pathways implementing emerging technologies for predictive medicine in rhinitis and asthma across the life cycle

The Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative commenced during a World Health Organization workshop in 1999. The initial goals were (1) to propose a new allergic rhinitis classification, (2) to promote the concept of multi-morbidity in asthma and rhinitis and (3) to develop guidelines with all stakeholders that could be used globally for all countries and populations. ARIA-disseminated and implemented in over 70 countries globally-is now focusing on the implementation of emerging technologies for individualized and predictive medicine. MASK [MACVIA (Contre les Maladies Chroniques pour un Vieillissement Actif)-ARIA Sentinel NetworK] uses mobile technology to develop care pathways for the management of rhinitis and asthma by a multi-disciplinary group and by patients themselves. An app (Android and iOS) is available in 20 countries and 15 languages. It uses a visual analogue scale to assess symptom control and work productivity as well as a clinical decision support system. It is associated with an inter-operable tablet for physicians and other health care professionals. The scaling up strategy uses the recommendations of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. The aim of the novel ARIA approach is to provide an active and healthy life to rhinitis sufferers, whatever their age, sex or socio-economic status, in order to reduce health and social inequalities incurred by the disease

ARIA 2016: Care pathways implementing emerging technologies for predictive medicine in rhinitis and asthma across the life cycle

The Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative commenced during a World Health Organization workshop in 1999. The initial goals were (1) to propose a new allergic rhinitis classification, (2) to promote the concept of multi-morbidity in asthma and rhinitis and (3) to develop guidelines with all stakeholders that could be used globally for all countries and populations. ARIA—disseminated and implemented in over 70 countries globally—is now focusing on the implementation of emerging technologies for individualized and predictive medicine. MASK [MACVIA (Contre les Maladies Chroniques pour un Vieillissement Actif)-ARIA Sentinel NetworK] uses mobile technology to develop care pathways for the management of rhinitis and asthma by a multi-disciplinary group and by patients themselves. An app (Android and iOS) is available in 20 countries and 15 languages. It uses a visual analogue scale to assess symptom control and work productivity as well as a clinical decision support system. It is associated with an inter-operable tablet for physicians and other health care professionals. The scaling up strategy uses the recommendations of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. The aim of the novel ARIA approach is to provide an active and healthy life to rhinitis sufferers, whatever their age, sex or socio-economic status, in order to reduce health and social inequalities incurred by the disease

Improving the Throughput of Distributed Hash Tables Using Congestion-Aware Routing

Advanced applications for Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), such as Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval, require a DHT to quickly and efficiently process a large number (in the order of millions) of requests. In this paper we study mechanisms to optimize the throughput of DHTs. Our goal is to maximize the number of route operations per peer per second a DHT can perform (given certain constraints on the lookup delay). Each peer receives congestion feedback from the DHT, which it uses to adjust its routing decisions. This way, peers can avoid routing through slow parts of the overlay network and hence increase the rate at which they insert new messages into the DHT.We provide a numerical analysis of congestion-aware routing in DHTs and show that considerable improvements in throughput are possible compared to DHTs with proximity neighbor selection and strictly greedy routing

Diclofenac Hypersensitivity: Antibody Responses to the Parent Drug and Relevant Metabolites

Background: Hypersensitivity reactions against nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like diclofenac (DF) can manifest as Type I-like allergic reactions including systemic anaphylaxis. However, except for isolated case studies experimental evidence for an IgE-mediated pathomechanism of DF hypersensitivity is lacking. In this study we aimed to investigate the possible involvement of drug-and/or metabolite-specific antibodies in selective DF hypersensitivity. Methodology/Principal Findings: DF, an organochemically synthesized linkage variant, and five major Phase I metabolites were covalently coupled to carrier proteins. Drug conjugates were analyzed for coupling degree and capacity to crosslink receptor-bound IgE antibodies from drug-sensitized mice. With these conjugates, the presence of hapten-specific IgE antibodies was investigated in patients' samples by ELISA, mediator release assay, and basophil activation test. Production of sulfidoleukotrienes by drug conjugates was determined in PBMCs from DF-hypersensitive patients. All conjugates were shown to carry more than two haptens per carrier molecule. Immunization of mice with drug conjugates induced drug-specific IgE antibodies capable of triggering mediator release. Therefore, the conjugates are suitable tools for detection of drug-specific antibodies and for determination of their anaphylactic activity. Fifty-nine patients were enrolled and categorized as hypersensitive either selectively to DF or to multiple NSAIDs. In none of the patients' samples evidence for drug/metabolite-specific IgE in serum or bound to allergic effector cells was found. In contrast, a small group of patients (8/59, 14%) displayed drug/metabolite-specific IgG. Conclusions/Significance: We found no evidence for an IgE-mediated effector mechanism based on haptenation of protein carriers in DF-hypersensitive patients. Furthermore, a potential involvement of the most relevant metabolites in DF hypersensitivity reactions could be excluded